How much do you really know about your freight once it hits the road? If you’re like most of us, you know … pretty much what the driver says. Now, with the federal mandate, most likely there’s an ELD (electronic logging device) in the cab, but what does that really provide?
Well, it tells you how long the driver has been on the road and where the tractor is. But what about the freight itself? What can that tell you during transloading, and after? And how about temperature control? Damage? LTL (Less-Than-Truckload? ELD doesn’t give you insight into any of that. It was built for upgrading manual logging of hours.
And if you ask us, it misses the mark for true visibility of cargo in the supply chain. Agreed? Then let’s make 2021 the year you go beyond check calls and ELD. This year, see your whole supply chain with next-level tracker technology. A full-scale freight visibility platform puts you in control.
Out with the Old, In with the New: Freight Visibility Platform Edition
So, we can all agree that “visibility” is the word of the year for your supply chain in 2021. Now how do you integrate that into your daily operations? What do you get to remove from your process, and what do you replace it with, to win back your team’s time?
It’s one thing to know you need more visibility, but quite another to implement it — and another still to bring your team on board. You start by identifying every point in your end-to-end process where the right supply chain tracker saves you time, money, and stress of the unknown. Next, take a step back and look at how you’re currently handling each of those steps. Finally, draw the direct comparison between the old way and how you’ll do things differently when leveraging a freight visibility platform.
This might seem like a daunting analysis on top of day-to-day demands, but we’ll get you started. Here are the many ways that the right supply chain tracker transforms your traditional freight moving process, from origin to delivery.
Out with Check Calls; In with Automated, Real-Time Updates
If you ever wished your freight could just tell you where it is and if it’s intact, you’re in the right place. Internet of Things (IoT) technology gives you visibility into the status of the pallet itself — not someone else’s unverifiable assessment. For one thing, this immediately relieves the burden of repetitive check calls from your shipping team (plus the nerve-wracking downtime waiting for a driver to call back). But it also saves time and energy for the driver and/or dispatcher. Now they can focus on safe driving and effectively delivering the freight, instead of taking calls and providing reports along the way. But you like calling your customer service rep? Great! Do it! Now, you can have a more expansive conversation rather than babysitting.
Out with Delivery Notices; In with Geofencing
So, both your drivers and your coordination team are saving time and hassle now that your check calls are slim to none. But wait, there’s more! The right supply chain tracker even eliminates pre-delivery and delivery completion notifications from your driver’s to-do list. With a comprehensive supply chain tracker, they can now just drive your freight right on up to the destination, knowing the crews are in the loop and ready to receive it. That’s because your pallets can now take care of these notifications instead.
Yes, geofencing lets the freight itself tell the destination that it’s almost there, as well as let you know when it’s arrived. And if you’re sensing a pattern, you’re right: this is yet another feature that removes manual steps from the driver’s to-do list as well as your command center, and even smooths the process for freight recipients.
Out with Requesting Docs; In with Automatic Document Routing
You’re glad that calls and manual processes are reduced on all sides. Now it’s time to get rid of the other headaches. What about paperwork? Can we axe that too?
Not exactly; records are still vital to the process, and always will be. But your freight management platform can automate and categorize documents for you, wherever you are. Get the docs you need on your phone, your computer, your team’s database, or anywhere else you need it.
The goal of a new platform isn’t to turn everything you do upside down, but to simplify. This works with whatever ecosystem you already have in place for your docs. This just gives you the freedom of not wondering where that weight certificate got to or how to find the BOL you need, when you need it.
Out with Damage; In with Quality Control
If you’ve ever lost freight to damage, you know that you don’t always get the full story on what happened. And in many cases, it’s not the driver’s fault. Sitting up in the tractor and focusing on the road, how are they to know what’s happening to the freight at all times? But because of this, not only do you miss out on details, but both the driver and your team might not even learn about the damage until hours later — or longer.
And the worst part? If you’d had a way to be notified right as the event occurred, you might have been able to save the shipment.
Supply chain trackers are changing that. You now know that your pallet can tell you when it’s been delivered. But it can also let you know when it’s endangered by major risks like environmental extremes — or adrenaline-junkie drivers. What makes this possible? A freight visibility platform that offers temperature monitoring to flag high and low temps, and accelerometers measuring G-force and extreme impact. Goodbye lost freight; hello instant course-correction!
A Supply Chain Tracker for the Future
True freight visibility is hard to come by, so you need the right partner with the right platform to make it happen. But you’re in luck!
If anything or everything you read above sounds like a dream come true, you can wake up now. Delivery Chain has it all. Our enterprise-level freight visibility platform has all these features, customized to the specific needs of your business. So you get everything you need, and nothing you don’t. (By the way, military-grade security is in the “things you need” category, and we’ve got that, too.)
So get in touch and make 2021 the year of ultimate visibility across your supply chain.